Sunday, July 16, 2017

Crossing The Simpson Desert.

It took us 4 days to reach the Simpson Desert which is at the top of South Australia and runs across just under the Northern Territory border.

We swam in natural hot springs at Dalhousie Springs. It's a very large waterhole with plenty of room for tourists and we loved our time there.

We needed sand flags on our vehicles as the sand dunes are so high that you could be arriving at the top of a dune and not be able to see anyone coming from the other side. Radios are used to let oncoming traffic know that you are cresting a dune and we all keep a good look out for w=vehicles coming from the opposite direction.

We camped out in the desert for 4 nights and really enjoyed the solitude.

It was school holidays when we were there and the tracks were more difficult and there were more people there than usual but as DD2 is a teacher we didn't have much choice on when we could travel and the area is so large out there that there is plenty of room for everyone.

A major part of crossing the Simpson Desert is crossing over a thousand sand dunes and we took the French line again as it's the hardest and most enjoyable for the challenge of crossing dunes. We wanted to give DD2 and her DH a chance to see what the challenge was all about and their car performed magnificently. Normally we wouldn't recommend towing a camping trailer but as DD2 was 32 weeks pregnant we thought it was worth it so she could have a good night's rest. If the dunes were too hard on the French Line we had the option of crossing down to one of the easier tracks, but they managed well and I swapped cars with her when the dunes became a bit too challenging as our car handled the dunes better without towing a trailer. As you can see we had lovely daytime weather.
Hugs, Jan Mac